GINEVRA by LEONARDO DA VINCI 1474 Poster

Ginevra de’ Benci (born c. 1458) was an aristocrat from fifteenth-century Florence, admired for her intelligence by Florentine contemporaries. She is the subject of a portrait painting by Leonardo da Vinci when she was 16. The oil-on-wood portrait was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., United States, in 1967, for $5 million paid to the Princely House of Liechtenstein, a record price at the time. It is the only painting by Leonardo on public view in the Americas. The painting’s imagery and the text on the reverse of the panel support the identification of this picture. Directly behind the young lady in the portrait is a juniper tree. The reverse of the portrait is decorated with a juniper sprig encircled by a wreath of laurel and palm and is memorialized by the phrase VIRTVTEM FORMA DECORAT (beauty adorns virtue).